The First Step
by padfoot's prose
Summary: It's a long journey from adversaries to lovers. This is the first step.


******Disclaimer: Characters, setting etc. are not mine.**

**The First Step**

_The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:  
Decide what you want._

- Ben Stein

...

Lily is sitting by the window when it happens. She's curled up on an armchair there, a book cradled in her hands, as always. Only her face is turned away as she gazes out into the night, and she looks so peaceful there, so relaxed that it brings a smile to James' lips. He's meant to be listening to Padfoot complain about one thing or another, but Lily's profile looks so stunning from here that he can't get his mind off her. The light from the moon makes her pale skin shine and her hair ignite in tiny silver sparks.

That's when she does it: reaches up to her face with both hands and pulls her hair back, tipping her chin up a little. She looks almost haughty like that - neck arched luxuriously, lips tight and thin, eyebrows tilted in a frown - and yet she seems unhappy with it. Quickly, self-consciously, she drops her hair so it forms a curtain around her face, blocking everyone else out, and look backs down to her book.

"-and then the bloody moron says- Hey! Prongs, what are you-?"

James doesn't exactly realise that he's stood up until he's done it. Padfoot is looking disgruntled and Moony is glancing up from his paper and Wormtail is staring vacantly at the portrait hole and James feels like he's committed himself to this action now, so he gives a little shrug and moves towards Lily by the window. He can feel his friends' eyes on him as he goes.

"Lily?" he murmurs when he reaches her chair, because she hasn't looked up from her book and he's not sure how much she can see with all that hair obscuring her peripherals.

"Potter," she replies, curt but not rude, and he figures that's as good an invitation to stay as he'll get.

"Um, are you-" he stops, because he realises he doesn't know what to ask.

He doesn't know why he's here, really, only that Lily seemed discontent with her own reflection and that makes no sense to him and on some subconscious level he felt like he should let her know that. Clearly, his subconscious is unaware of the fact that he and Lily don't talk often. She's only just started letting him call her Lily.

Lily still hasn't looked up, but from behind her hair comes, "Am I...?"

"You're beautiful," James blurts, because he's a sixteen year old with an infatuation that has spanned the last five years of his life, and in all that time his poetic abilities haven't improved, "Just in case you didn't know."

Two eyes have finally appeared from behind that curtain of hair, but it's almost more disconcerting the way Lily is looking at him now, her expression a mixture of perplexed, amused and insulted. He's hoping insulted is just her default setting when she looks at him, and that she wasn't actually insulted by what he said. He'd meant it.

They look at each other for a long moment, James feeling distinctly uncomfortable in a way he is very much not used to. Lily just has this piercing way of looking at him (when she isn't screaming curses), that makes him feel as if she's peeling everything back and seeing him bare. Bare in a bad way, which James didn't really think was possible until Lily started looking at him like this. It just feels... intimate, and intimate is not something James is used to feeling.

"Was that the wrong thing to say?" he eventually asks, because that piercing look is getting to him.

Her eyes are so _green_, he realises, that's what it is. Those green-green eyes and red-red hair and skin the lightest pink, as if she's only caressed by the gentlest rays of sun each day, just enough to give her skin a fullness, a presence, a delicate loveliness.

Lily shakes her head slowly, then says, "No, it wasn't. I'm just... surprised. I didn't expect you to say that. You caught me off guard."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It was nice. What you said."

She pauses, and her eyes break contact with his, flicking down to look at the arm of the couch.

"Thank you," she adds, her voice a mumble.

James smiles, just a little, not sure what to make of this strange exchange.

It _is_ nice, he thinks, saying things like that to Lily and not having her jump down his throat about it. He wishes he could compliment her more. Sometimes he's not sure she realises how gorgeous she is.

Her eyes have jumped back up to meet his again, and are a little wide with what might be shock.

"Did I say that last bit out loud?" James asks.

Lily nods. He's surprised that she hasn't yet gotten angry at him. Normally they'd both have their wands pointed at each other by now.

"Sorry," he says again.

Then he wonders why it suddenly feels so inappropriate to be complimenting her. He compliments her all the time, usually. Granted, it's often a little bit crass and sometimes mightn't sound genuine, but he does still compliment her. He means it every time, even if it doesn't always sound like he does.

Lily blinks up at him, hands still folded around the book on her lap. Her gaze is astute, curious, and her hair frames her face neatly, her eyebrows still tilted in that slight frown. She bites her lip, and her cheeks are tinged red as she asks, "That was only the last bit? What was the first bit, then?"

"Nothing, really," James shrugs, "Just that- I think it's _nice_ that you didn't try to kill me for being nice to you. This feels like a good first step."

"A first step towards what?"

James smiles a little wider, starts walking away and then finally responds, "Towards something good, I think. Something a little like harmony."

Lily rolls her eyes, indulgent for once of his attempts at poetry, and turns back to her book. But not before catching her own eye in her reflection and giving a tiny smile.


End file.
